All atwitter About Twitter Marketing

There's been a lot said and written about the newest Social Media craze, Twitter.

Particularly in the popular press, there's also been a lot of misinformation. Sometimes the only way to get the real story is to try it yourself. I thought I'd give it a shot, and throw in my two cents on what Twitter's really all about with respect to marketing.

I've been on Twitter for a few months now. As of today, I'm following around 45 people, and have about 45 following me as well. I think that at this point I've got a pretty good idea of what Twitter is and isn't. So here's my take:

WHAT TWITTER IS

Most fundamentally, it's a micro-blogging platform with a limitation of 140 characters per post. Most of you have almost certainly seen a blog online by now. Just like blog postings come in many shapes, sizes and topics, so do "tweets"--the term for an individual message or post on Twitter. "Following" someone on Twitter is akin to subscribing to updates on a blog.

The 140 character limitation is very extreme, and forces even the most verbose writers to be very brief. This can be a good thing. This 140 character limitation also allows Twitter to be available on even platforms with very limited resources, such as cell phones. This wide platform availability extends the potential uses for Twitter, greatly adding to its utility as a one-to-many instant-communication tool. Twitter is actually pretty simple.

WHAT TWITTER ISN'T

It's not robust--it's very limited by the 140 characters. So it isn't suitable for everything--certainly not anything that requires a lot of detail. You really can't publish anything of note directly on Twitter. It's not good for:

* Complex or lengthy communications
* Private communications, while possible, are probably best handled via other methods.
* It doesn't replace a Blog or website

Contrary to what you see in the popular mass media, it's not some weird cult of people who are inexplicably exchanging tweets on what they're having for breakfast. It's also not strictly an avenue for following the day to day minutiae of People Magazine's list of 100 top celebrities (Aston Kutcher's 1 million twitter followers notwithstanding) The biggest thing to remember about Twitter is that it's just a horizontal communications medium--which by itself isn't much of anything. Twitter is really what people decide to make of it.

WHAT TWITTER IS GOOD FOR

The uses for Twitter are almost as broad as the profile of its millions of users. It's hard to classify best uses because of this. But in simple terms, I find that the major uses of Twitter falls into a few categories--at least with respect to what interests a marketer:

Personal Communications with friends
In this respect, Twitter is like a simpler, quicker version of Facebook in how it's being used. This is where you see people broadcasting where they're having breakfast--those messages are really intended for their circle of close friends.

Personal Branding
An executive or professional using Twitter to increase awareness of his/her capabilities or work.

Business Branding
Similar to personal branding, but used by a business to provide exposure to the capabilities, products or services it offers.

Business Communications
This is the more tactical business use--restaurants broadcasting the specials of the day to their customer base, new product announcements, links to press releases, etc.

HOW BEST TO USE TWITTER

Have a strategy, and stay true to it
If you are using Twitter for business branding, don't continuously talk about what you're doing for fun that night. A more personal message occasionally which is of particular interest in fine, but remember your target audience. This is one of the biggest mistakes that a newbie Twitterer makes--they think being on Twitter means broadcasting their daily minutae. But for business conversations--who's interested in that? It's common sense. If you're using Twitter for business/marketng purposes, stay on topic at least most of the time. If you want to use Twitter extensively for multiple purposes, it might be best to create multiple personas.

Use it to listen and learn--not just broadcast
If you pick the right people to follow, Twitter can be an extremely efficient source of information in your chosen topical interests. You have to be careful--you can easily become obsessed, and Twitter can become a real time sink. But if you're judicious in your use, you can leverage the work of others to find things of interest to you. And by watching how other skilled Twitter users utilize the platform, you can learn how best to use the tool yourself.

Use links
Even though the 140 character limit won't allow complex messages, links are allowed, and are very powerful in Twitter. Often Tweets are "teasers" or introductions to the linked document. For example, I broadcast the availability of new articles on my Blog by posting a Twitter message

Use keywords
One of the most powerful aspects of Twitter is the ability to easily "re-tweet" a message, or pass it along to your own Twitter network of followers. This makes Twitter a very powerful viral platform in getting the word out on your chosen topic. If you include keywords in your tweet that are relevant to your target audience, the viral aspect can really enhance the breadth of delivery of your marketing message.

That's a take on Twitter after a few months of use. I'm sure many of you have different experiences with this exciting new platform--post a comment and let's get the discussion going!

Follow Phil Morettini and Morettini on Management via Twitter, Facebook, RSS, or the PJM Consulting Quarterly Newsletter.

The Future of Wireless Communications

Land Lines are going away, right? Everyone says so. We hire young women, generally in their twenties, to help take care of my son. I can't remember the last time one of their phones had an Area Code associated with the place they are currently living.

That's because they don't use landlines--many people in their twenties and thirties move around a lot, and rely strictly on a cell phone as their sole or primary telephone. If they have a couple of roommates, occasionally they will also have a landline. But the number usually isn't given out, and doesn't appear to be used much.

So does this mean that we are rapidly heading toward the wireless society that pundits have been predicting for a number of years? Or is wireless growth slowing and about to settle into mature market mode, with modest incremental growth in the future? There are a number of factors on both sides of this discussion--let's explore a few.

Factors Pointing Towards Acceleration Of Wireless

Mobility
Society is becoming more and more mobile as time goes on, and everyone is getting used to being able to do things on the go, that used to be done only at home or the office. This trend appears to be one that will only continue--and is a positive thing to most people's thinking. I do think there may be a bit of a backlash in this area--"too much of a good thing"--I'll address this later on.

New Services
The addition of many new services should drive users to utilize wireless as an increasingly greater percentage of their total computing/communications device usage. Trends such as the merging of consumer cameras and music into smartphones create the types of new services that are driving increased wireless usage in the near term. Location-based services could provide another nice pop in growth, if they ever do reach their potential (and they've been "coming" for quite a while). I would note that I don't consider these trends the type of major innovations that will cause a fundamental, "step-function" like shift and a major positive effect on wireless usage. I view these new applications as incremental, something to continue the modest growth we are currently seeing in the wireless market--in the western world, at least. Outside of the developed world, of course, there is some phenomenal growth occurring. In terms of market development, I view rapid wireless growth in developing countries as a "catch up" phenomena.

Cost
This is a bit of a two edged sword. Like any other technology-driven market, the cost of electronics and services are being continually driven down, especially as wireless has scaled into a mass market, with corresponding economies of scale. Up to this point, at least, there has been sufficient competition to drive down the price of services from the wireless carriers. There seems to be some flattening of this price deflation in the US recently, however. On the other hand, as new services have been introduced, the "total bill" that consumers end up paying for ALL of their technology services (wireless, TV, Internet Access, etc.) has been going up. There will be a point where consumers say "enough is enough"; the total tech entertainment and communications bill simply can't rise forever.

Technology Innovation and Competition
I do believe that technological innovations, market scale, and competition will all play a factor in continuing to bring down overall costs in the long run. New technologies such as WIMAX, networked WiFi and in-home pico cell towers will provide technological alternatives for consumers, and therefore increased indirect competition. And there are certainly many exciting developments in research labs which we haven't even heard of yet, that will lead to increased innovation and continuing industry growth. I really believe that the technological aspect of wireless is still in its infancy, and will be the major factor that leads to long growth in wireless markets.


Factors Pointing Towards Slowing Of Wireless


QOS
The biggest issue, in my opinion, that will limit the future growth of wireless, is the lack of sufficient Quality-of-Service. Current cell phone service in the US sucks. There's no other way of putting it. Depending upon your carrier in a given metro area, service can still be spotty, with persistent dropped calls--even after all of these years, and the fact that cell phones are a ubiquitous mass market item. I still have 3 landlines in my house, two for business usage. I sure don't want to talk to a new client on a cell phone connection--if I can help it. I know many business people that don't feel this way, and use their cell phone exclusively--my opinion is hardly universal. But I don't really understand it. Especially inside, in homes and offices, you just can't trust that the call quality to be anywhere near what is demanded by an important business call. Some of this is based upon real issues--mountains in the way of radio waves, etc. But much of the problem is simply the wireless carriers jamming too many calls into too little spectrum, for cost reasons. I'm quite surprised that no one has yet come up with a "business quality" wireless service, which guarantees a higher level of call quality--much like a business or first class airline seat.

Complexity
As new features and services get added, even if they are welcomed, user interfaces and experiences almost always get more complex--at least initially. Complexity is the enemy of mass acceptance. So vendors need to be careful about adding new bells, whistles and new revenue-generating services faster than the market can become comfortable with them

Size
The size of devices, dictated by the need for mobility, works directly against a premium user experience for many functions. The new iPhone is a major step forward, for example, and sets a new standard for browsing the Internet on a truly portable device. Yet anyone that would rather surf the net on an iPhone, rather than any real computer, would have to be classified as insane. As more compelling online services are developed specifically for mobile devices, this may become less of an issue. But the size constraints required to make a good mobile device work against wireless devices for many current applications. Here is where I believe that truly breakthrough technologies--things like speech recognition, holographic displays and virtual keyboards--are needed to make a real dent in this issue.

User experience controlled by Telcos
The wireless carriers have held a stranglehold on the user experience thus far in the life of cell service. Because of this, you have large, conservative telephone companies basically deciding on what users want and should have, in an otherwise technology-driven space. Most of their decisions are driven by their own short term revenue concerns, with little vision on what can grow the market exponentially in the long run. At the most basic level, you can't even take your cell phone and use it on a new carrier network. A few major technology vendors are pushing to open things up, such as Apple and the open browsing experience with the iPhone, and Google's recent attempts to make new wireless spectrum open. But the wireless telcos still have a stranglehold on the market and will keep things as proprietary as possible for as long as possible. They're terrified a being left as just commodity bandwidth providers, like their wired counterparts were in the dialup Internet market. No one on the carrier side wants to see THAT happen again. Because of this, innovation in user experience will continue to be stunted.

It's Just "Too Much"
As I mentioned earlier in this article, we're all becoming instantly accessible no matter where we are. I am an early adopter of many types of gadgets--a real tech guy. I am also an email junkie. I always expected that I'd be one of the first users of a smartphone that provided the proper balance between a cell phone and a computer/data communications device. Certainly these devices have been refined, and exist today. But by the time it happened, I decided that I really didn't need to be quite that accessible. I'm not an emergency room doctor, nor a high level commodities trader that needs instant access to everything. It's rare that I'm not in front of a computer to get email access within a couple of hours. And I can always be reached with a regular call on my cell phone, office phone, or home phone. Do I really need a device that provides instant email, instant messaging and cell phone access? With the convenience of that device comes the penalty of never having a moment's peace that is totally within your control. It's my opinion that as modern life has accelerated to warp speed on a normal basis, more and more folks are going to be rejecting the notion that 24/7, instant access is a necessity--let alone a convenience.

Summary
It is always difficult to forecast how such a huge, important market will develop over time. In many ways wireless communications has already commoditized, and in other ways one can hypothesize that these technologies are in their infancy. If they are truly n their infancy--then forecasting the future is a dangerous game. My own feeling is that we are at a very early stage--a plateau of sorts, which appears much like the steady-state commoditization of mature markets. But I expect that there will be a number of disruptive technological changes coming, separated by a period of years where the negative factors slow growth, over the next couple of decades. Wireless communications will hit plateaus where it appears the market has matured and growth has slowed. Then a breakthrough new technology will appear, changing the game and re-igniting robust growth. What will those technological innovations be--holograms, speech recognition, or large increases in data throughput capacity in the wireless spectrum? That's where the guessing game begins. How do you see this market? What breakthroughs do you see in the coming years? Post a comment and enrich our discussion on this interesting topic.

Phil Morettini
PJM Consulting
www.pjmconsult.com